1. Field of the Invention
In general, the present invention relates to pill organizers that hold pills in dose units and enable a patient to keep track of when and if the pills have been taken properly. More particularly, the present invention relates to the structure of such pill organizers and features intended to maintain the cleanliness of such pill organizers.
2. Prior Art Description
Many people take pills on a regular basis. The pills taken may be vitamin pills or nutritional supplement pills. Many times the pills taken by a person are necessary to treat a medical condition or disease. Regardless of why pills are taken, if the pills are taken on a regular basis, it is very easy for a person to forget that certain pills were taken at certain times. If a person forgets they have already taken a pill and takes the same pill again, that person may overdose or otherwise experience an adverse reaction. If a person forgets to take a pill, that person may lack the benefits provided by the pill. Both scenarios present significant health risks to a person.
To complicate matters, the number of pills taken regularly by a person tends to increase with age. Furthermore, short-term memory tends to decrease with age. Accordingly, it is very common for an elderly person to forget whether or not they have taken their medications in a timely fashion.
Recognizing the need to help people keep track of medications, pill organizers have been developed. Pill organizers are storage containers that are divided into various compartments. Often the pill organizer has several compartments to represent the seven days of the week. Pills are placed into each of the compartments at the beginning of the week. A person then takes the pills from one of the compartments everyday. If a person sees that the “Monday” compartment is empty, he/she knows that the pills for that day have already been taken. Such prior art pill organizers are exemplified by U.S. Pat. No. 6,464,506 to Welles, entitled INFORMATION AND MEDICATION COMPLIANCE ORGANIZER and U.S. Pat. No. 4,749,085, to Denney, entitled PILL BOX HOLDER.
Often, a prior art pill organizer is a plastic box that defines a plurality of small square compartments. The pills are placed into the compartments. In order to take the pills, a person must first reach into the small compartment and remove the pills. This seams simple, but it often is not. Many pills are very small. It is difficult to reach and grab such pills at the bottom of a narrow compartment. The task is far more difficult for elderly patients that may have arthritis in their hands and/or poor eyesight.
Another problem associated with prior art pill organizers is one of cross-contamination. When pills are placed inside a small compartment, some fragment dust from that pill remains inside the pill compartment. The fragment dust may then contaminate other pills that are subsequently placed inside the pill organizer. For example, many cholesterol lowering drugs are known to cause birth defects in pregnant women. Pregnant women are advised against even touching such drugs. If a pregnant woman uses a pill organizer to organize her prenatal medications, and that pill organizer is contaminated with cholesterol lowering drugs from previous usage, serious consequences may result.
Yet another disadvantage of prior art pill organizers is that the pills within the organizers are not isolated from the surrounding environment. Pills may lay in a pill organizer for days or weeks, depending upon the size of the organizer. Many pills contain pharmaceutical compounds that are adversely affected by humidity and other environmental factors, such as heat and light. Such pills are typically held within sealed pill cases provided by the pharmacy. However, when the pill is removed from the pill case and is placed in the pill organizer, the pill becomes exposed to the surrounding environment for possibly a prolonged period of time.
A need therefore exists for an improved pill organizer that not only tracks the taking of medications, but also makes the medications easily accessible and prevents potentially dangerous cross-contamination and environmental degradation. This need is met by the present invention as described and claimed below.